Anti-Choice Pharmacies Help to Increase the Abortion Rate

Thanks, Robert Semier of Chantilly, for refusing to do your job, for threating women’s health, and for upping the abortion rate!

I know a lot of the other feminist blogs have already covered this one, but I’m finally getting around to it: “Pro-Life” pharmacies denying medical care to women around the country. You can guess what “pro-life” pharmacies do: They don’t fill scripts for birth control or emergency contraception, which means that they make it harder for women to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And when you don’t have the tools to prevent pregnancy, guess what happens? You get pregnant! Since about half of unintended pregnancies end in abortion, you can thank your friendly “pro-life” pharmacist for doing his part in jacking up the abortion rate.

The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients’ rights against those of health-care workers who assert a “right of conscience” to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.

“The United States was founded on the idea that people act on their conscience — that they have a sense of right and wrong and do what they think is right and moral,” said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Society, a Chicago public-interest law firm that is defending a pharmacist who was fined and reprimanded for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. “Every pharmacist has the right to do the same thing,” Brejcha said.

Yes, people absolutely do have a right to object to doing things they find immoral or wrong. And in places where people are legally compelled to be — school, for example — the law should not force them to do things that violate their conscience. But when you voluntarily accept a job in a particular field, you need to be able to do your job. If you’re a pharmacist, that means you need to fill prescriptions — even if you don’t like the drugs people are taking. If you’re a Scientologist who believes, for example, that it’s wrong to use anti-depressants, and you feel so strongly about that belief that you cannot justify being a part of other peoples’ use of anti-depressants, don’t be a pharmacist. If you’re a member of Fred Phelps’ church and you think AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality, and in carrying out that punishment you don’t believe that any HIV-positive people should get medication, don’t be a pharmacist. If you’re a fundamentalist Christian who believes it’s wrong to use birth control, and your belief is that it’s also wrong to allow other people to use birth control, then don’t be a pharmacist.

Hopefully you all see where I’m going with this: It’s easy to write it off as “conscience” when we’re talking about an area that has long been contentious and branded as an issue of politics rather than health care (I’m talking, of course, about women’s reproductive capacities). But the ideology behind this potentially affects all of us.

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

The most common, widely publicized conflicts have involved pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, morning-after pills and other forms of contraception. They say they believe that such methods can cause what amounts to an abortion and that the contraceptives promote promiscuity, divorce, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other societal woes. The result has been confrontations that have left women traumatized and resulted in pharmacists being fired, fined or reprimanded.

This is about much more than abortion and even birth control: It’s about the gatekeepers to health care trying to keep some of us out.

What happens if next, pharmacists or doctors refuse to serve non-Christians? Or if it comes back to bite them in the ass when, say, a conservative male Muslim paramedic refuses to touch women? Or if religious doctors and pharmacists decide that STDs are appropriate punishments for the sexually active and refuse to fill prescriptions for treatment medicine? Or if a paramedic or doctor refuses to deliver the baby of an unmarried woman?

Religious freedom is incredibly important, and people should not be compelled to act in ways that violate their conscience or their beliefs. But that doesn’t mean that people with particular belief systems should voluntarily walk into situations that explicitly violate their beliefs and then demand accommodation. If I’m a Jehovah’s Witness and I’m drafted into a war, that’s a religious freedom issue; if I’m a Jehovah’s Witness and I voluntarily join the Army next week, it’s a little harder to then argue that I shouldn’t be required to go to Iraq because of my religious beliefs.

Pharmacists need to do their jobs. It doesn’t get a whole lot more complicated than that.

54 Responses to Anti-Choice Pharmacies Help to Increase the Abortion Rate

“But that doesn’t mean that people with particular belief systems should voluntarily walk into situations that explicitly violate their beliefs and then demand accommodation”

ahh so true and logical….but remember when it comes down to limiting other’ freedom logic goes right out the damn window. Also, lets not forget how many of these places/people are still okay with the sale of Viagra…because it’s natural for women to have babies and lots of them…but it’s not natural for men not to be able to have sex so we have to help them

I’ve always wondered why pro-life pharmacies aren’t treated like abortion clinics. I mean, how many of these smug human stains are going to keep playing these games if they, and more importantly their insurance companies, know that fire bombings are just a part of daily business?

Yes, a very lucid explanation of the borderline between conscience and responsibility; the line about the Jehovah’s Witnesses is very good.

And sometimes, our consciences cost us our jobs. There’s nothing wrong with quitting a job on principle, something that Semier ought to do as once. And he can go off somewhere and bask in his self-righteousness, allowing women to get help from a colleague.

And, you know, I just want to say, Jill, you are on fire…I’m only skimming my blogroll right now because of work related things (like briefs and court dates and deadlines, oh my!), but I have been very impressed with and fired up by everything you’re writing lately.

I refuse to believe that this is about any individual’s morals. This isn’t about people’s religious freedom or consciences. This is about creating a fundamentalist Christian nation that, at the very least, subjugates everyone who doesn’t conform and, at the worst, keeps those outsiders from being healthy. These pharmacists and other healthcare professionals want to turn healthcare into a fundmentalist Christian institution so that only people who want to populate the country with other fundamentalist Christians will get the proper healthcare they need and have a basic human right to get. Everyone else gets shit on and dies out. Call me paranoid, but that’s what I think.

And that Semier guy creeps me the fuck out. He looks like a kid toucher.

And every time I hear about a pharmacist refusing to sell a woman birth control, I remember a friend of mine from college who had a little medical problem called a bleeding disorder. These jackasses have no way of knowing why a physician has prescribed a particular medication. In her case, she needed the pill so she wouldn’t bleed to death. But she must have really just wanted to slut it up, ’cause the fundies know all! Grr.

Does anyone know a liberal pharmacist who wants to start some trouble? They should start refusing to fill prescriptions for Viagra, Cialis, Caverject, etc. LOUDLY. Maybe with some comments like “perhaps if you were to EXERCISE you wouldn’t need to take this to get it up.”

Okay, I don’t think I could bring myself to say that to most folks presenting with a prescription for such drugs. But if Robert Semier showed up…

Better yet, I’d like to get a job at a strip club, refuse to get on stage and dance naked citing “moral objections,” and still demand to make a couple grand a night standing there with clothes on. How quickly do you think I would get fired?

Better yet, I’d like to get a job at a strip club, refuse to get on stage and dance naked citing “moral objections,” and still demand to make a couple grand a night standing there with clothes on. How quickly do you think I would get fired?

Thats not a good analogy. If a pharmacist goes to work at CVS and refuses to fill OCP scripts, then CVS can absolutely fire him and the pharmacist has no recourse. Furthermore, if a pharmacist refuses to fill OCP scripts, then of course he cant compel the patient to pay for the medication. OR bill Medicare/Medicaid/insurance for “drug counseling” purposes. That would be billing fraud and patently illegal.

However, if a pharmacist opens up his own pharmacy and decides not to stock/fill OCPs, then they can and should have the right to do so. Of course, in the vast majority of cities/states, his pharmacy will quickly go out of business because he’s at a competitive disadvantage compared to everyone else.

Medstudent, that creates problems for a lot of women. It means that a lot of women cannot get medication they need. And it means that women will be humiliated and mistreated on a regular basis. For a lot of women, especially in rural areas, “just go somewhere else” isn’t an option. Especially if your time is limited. Especially if you rely on public transportation. Especially if you have kids in tow. Especially if time is of the essence. Especially if you’ve just suffered a sexual assault, and just working up the courage to go to the pharmacy was trying enough, and you were traumatized again by the pharmacist treating you like a slut.

Part of the problem too is that these pharmacists are claiming that their right to refuse to fill prescriptions applies wherever they work — whether that’s at their own place or at CVS. And many chain drug stores are bowing to their pressure.

And even if they do open their own pharmacies, that doesn’t give them free reign to discriminate in who they serve or to flout ethical and professional obligations. The health care industry is regulated by both the government and by itself; a lot of the ethical considerations are self-regulating. It’s really dangerous to the entire practice if the standard is, “So long as you operate your own business, you can do whatever you want.”

If a pharmacist goes to work at CVS and refuses to fill OCP scripts, then CVS can absolutely fire him and the pharmacist has no recourse.

You’re assuming that the fired pharmacist won’t hire a lawyer and sue his/her former employer for religious discrimination……an assumption that is laughable considering the widespread alarm about the US’ “lawsuit happy culture” among conservatives and corporations.

Part of the problem too is that these pharmacists are claiming that their right to refuse to fill prescriptions applies wherever they work — whether that’s at their own place or at CVS. And many chain drug stores are bowing to their pressure.

And here, there is a direct conflict between an individual’s right to religious consciousness and a company’s obligation to maximizing profitable revenue at the least expense….and many religious conservatives say they are for the free market…

I wonder…how much actual room does the laws about religious conscience in the workplace allow the employer if that person’s religious conscience motivates actions which come into direct conflict with his/her professional obligations?

Medstudent, that creates problems for a lot of women. It means that a lot of women cannot get medication they need. And it means that women will be humiliated and mistreated on a regular basis. For a lot of women, especially in rural areas, “just go somewhere else” isn’t an option. Especially if your time is limited. Especially if you rely on public transportation. Especially if you have kids in tow. Especially if time is of the essence. Especially if you’ve just suffered a sexual assault, and just working up the courage to go to the pharmacy was trying enough, and you were traumatized again by the pharmacist treating you like a slut.

I’m pretty sure market forces are enough to keep the anti-choice pharmacist phenomenon to something on the order of miniscule. Just to try a little experiment though, give me a rural zip code somewhere and I’ll find a pharmacy nearby that scripts OCPs. At any rate, I’d bet a small fortune that women in any part of the USA are not forced to bypass nearby “anti-choice” pharmacies in favor of longer distance ones that agree to script OCPs. That is to say, wherever there is an “anti-choice” pharmacy, I’d bet dollars to donuts that there are other pharmacies in the area who do script OCPs.

Part of the problem too is that these pharmacists are claiming that their right to refuse to fill prescriptions applies wherever they work — whether that’s at their own place or at CVS. And many chain drug stores are bowing to their pressure.

Well they can claim that all they want, but that doesnt make it so. Its just BS posturing. I’m 100% against any law which says CVS/Rite-Aid cant fire a pharmacist who refuses to script OCPs. If those laws exist, they should be struck down. And I sincerely doubt that these huge chains are “bowing to the pressure” of a small group of rogue pharmacists who make up a tiny miniscule proportion of the pharmacist population. What business sense does it make to alienate a good 50% of your population just to accomodate a small group of fools?

And even if they do open their own pharmacies, that doesn’t give them free reign to discriminate in who they serve or to flout ethical and professional obligations. The health care industry is regulated by both the government and by itself; a lot of the ethical considerations are self-regulating. It’s really dangerous to the entire practice if the standard is, “So long as you operate your own business, you can do whatever you want.”

I never said that there should be zero regulations in pharmacy or healthcare. Thats obviously insane. But its a far cry to have the kind of legal mandate that some posters on this forum want. Its not done to any other profession or business, even in those sectors that are JUST AS life-saving as pharmacy/medicine.

I have to agree with Thick Red Glasses #9 Post. It’s gotten to the point where this can’t possibly be about individual ethics but about a secret agenda to pull the rug out from under women. And I don’t think it’s just paranoia. The fundies have been throwing a fit for ages now about how immoral women have become. *sigh*

Medstudent, that’s not true. Conscience clauses in state legislation allow for any pharmacist to refuse filling a prescription for birth control. They have a legal right to refuse, so they can’t get fired for that reason. It doesn’t make a difference whether they work at an existing pharmacy or open one themselves. This issue goes well beyond “pro-life pharmacies” into regular pharmacies that women visit every day.

As for letting the free market decide, that would only work if these pharmacies advertised themselves as pro-life, which they don’t. If they thought they were doing such a great thing, they’d advertise the shit out of it. I wouldn’t buy a roll of Life Savers at a pharmacy that refused to sell condoms, and I’m sure most people wouldn’t either. Instead, these places keep the fact that they’ll dick anyone out of filling people’s legal prescriptions a big secret, so that people won’t realize that they’re scamming you until you already kept them in business by buying other stuff from them.

As infuriating as the whole “pro-life pharmacy” excuse is, you can’t just claim that people shouldn’t enter a particular field if they happen to have a certain set of beliefs when a) those beliefs stem from a protected class like religion, and b) that particular field consists of doing far more than whatever’s violating your beliefs (i.e. filling BC prescriptions). It’d be read as discrimination and policies prohibiting pro-life pharmacists would never fly.

But at the very least, I think pro-life pharmacists should be forced to explain to those seeking BC that while they won’t do it, pharmacist X works these hours and will or pharmacy Y has no such reservations. Way too often these people are turning women away and leaving them without any option, which is inexcusable and just far more problematic than just refusing to do it themselves. If pharmacies are going to recognize the right for their pharmacists to refuse to fill certain purchases, some sort of change is needed where these companies ensure that someone on staff is able to fill the prescriptions that their pro-life staff member refuses to.

The minute pharmacies stop selling Viagra and Levitra, is the minute middle aged conservative men “suddenly” get religion about how pharmacies should be regulated to perform their professional duties about selling legal drugs.

Funny. Jill, the pampered little princess who gets to go to the big city and play ‘law student’ (all on daddy’s dime, of course), is lecturing others about ethics. Little pretend lawyer Jill doesn’t realize that the pharmacists are acting according to their ethical rights. I have a feeling the skank Jill will be laughed out of the bar exam. The world doesn’t need shitty sluts like you to be lawyers.

Here’s my free market solution: pharmacies can refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills and the morning after pill, but they must post a large, legible sign at the entrance stating that they will not fill those prescriptions. Otherwise, you’re creating the corporations’ favorite “free market solution,” which is to restrict information to consumers and then penalize consumers for not knowing the information you kept from them.

If pharmacists and doctors want to restrict their practices by not stocking certain items or not serving certain customers, that’s fine, but they have to advertise that fact and not force people to pay fees for consultations or other prescriptions only to find out that the doctor or pharmacist will refuse to serve them.

There’s a word for that in other areas of business: false advertising. If a contractor says he’ll paint your house, accepts your deposit, and then refuses to do the job, s/he has to refund your money. Otherwise, it’s fraud.

If these doctors and pharmacists had the courage of their convictions they would state what they are up front and let consumers decide if they want to patronize that business or not. But they don’t — they keep their views hidden so they can milk as much money from the consumer as possible before they say, “Oh, sorry, I won’t do that.”

Time, every time someone writes about this, someone brings up the “and there’s even women who take it for reasons other than sex!” line. I get why, but I fear that reinforces the fundie claim that there’s something just wrong with women like me who really do just take it to “slut it up”, i.e. have sexual intercourse without getting punished by pregnancy. I have a completely equal claim to take the pills as someone who has “legitimate” medical reasons. I worry that making sexual reasons second class just gives justification to those who might argue, “Okay, well, pharmacists should have to fill out the prescriptions to women who have ‘legitimate’ medical reasons to take the pills, but not for those who have sex.”

Medstudent – CVS and Walgreen’s both have conscience clauses and allow their pharmacists to refuse to dispense medication that they object to. So yes, these huge chains are in fact bowing to the pressure of the fundies. So please, shut up.

Thou Shall Not Kill! You can’t change that standard with all this blather.

If you don’t want to be pregnant, keep your legs together. Period.

The womb business is God’s business – serve him in truth and OBEY him and he will bless you in all your ways – but this elephant dropping of words is NOT IT!

This nation is SPRINTING to her destruction and you brutes are busy filling the air with words – let me borrow some words from the prophet, to wit:

The prophets (think lying false prophets of Doomed america) prophesy falsely the priests bear rule by their means (think Priests Rape Children) but you perverts love to have it so. WHAT WILL YOU DO IN THE END THEREOF? When God looks your rebel butts in the face and drop-kicks you directly into the bowels of hell where the worm dieth not and the fire is never quenched?

Shortly, this nation of rebels will be running to the mountains and calling upon the rocks and mountains to fall on you to hide you from the wrath of the Lamb of God – HE that sitteth upon the throne – and at the front of your rebel pack will be your bare-assed Marines in whom you have put your trust!

I hope that works for you!

Your duty is to fear God, keep HIS commandments and give glory to him for the hour of his judgment is come! Worship that God that created you and is the only source that can send you to hell for EVER!

Conscience clauses in state legislation allow for any pharmacist to refuse filling a prescription for birth control. They have a legal right to refuse, so they can’t get fired for that reason. It doesn’t make a difference whether they work at an existing pharmacy or open one themselves. This issue goes well beyond “pro-life pharmacies” into regular pharmacies that women visit every day.

I already said I’m against that. CVS should be able to fire any pharmacist who does not script OCPs or any other drug. But thats different than state law FORCING all pharmacies to script OCPs. Surely you agree there’s a fundamental difference there.

Medstudent – CVS and Walgreen’s both have conscience clauses and allow their pharmacists to refuse to dispense medication that they object to. So yes, these huge chains are in fact bowing to the pressure of the fundies. So please, shut up.

If the conscience clause is pharmacy-based and not state law-based then I dont have a problem with it. I think the pharmacies would be stupid to alienate their customers, but if they want to lose business, then so be it. At any rate, Walgreens does require their pharmacists to pass on the script to the next pharmacist at that location or to a nearby pharmacist.

Any chain-based pharmacy who gives their pharmacists a conscience clause I suspect would do so ONLY because to not do so would invite massive lawsuits. Again, the percentage of pharmacists who refuse to script OCPs is a very small segment of the group and easily replaceable by many other pharmacists who are mainstream. I’ve already said before that pharmacists should be barred from filing lawsuits against these chains if they get fired for not scripting OCPs. Lets fix that problem, not add stupid mandates that would be unprecedented in any line of work.

Funny. Jill, the pampered little princess who gets to go to the big city and play ‘law student’ (all on daddy’s dime, of course), is lecturing others about ethics. Little pretend lawyer Jill doesn’t realize that the pharmacists are acting according to their ethical rights. I have a feeling the skank Jill will be laughed out of the bar exam. The world doesn’t need shitty sluts like you to be lawyers.

Wait, law school is all on Daddy’s dime? Shit, someone please tell my bank to stop billing me for the $200,000 I owe them.

I’m letting that comment through only because it’s such an amazingly succinct example of the MRA thought process: All women (even ones you don’t know anything about) are pampered little princesses and sluts; all women live off of their male relatives; and all women who have opinions are dumb bitches (and whores!).

Now please make your way back to Glenn Sacks’ place where you can complain about your ex-wife without annoying the rest of us.

I already said I’m against that. CVS should be able to fire any pharmacist who does not script OCPs or any other drug. But thats different than state law FORCING all pharmacies to script OCPs. Surely you agree there’s a fundamental difference there.

That’s what’s always funny to me when you come in here arguing the rights of business — you don’t seem to realize that the government REGULATES ALL BUSINESSES. If you have a business, you must have a business license to operate it, and that license comes from the government. Because of that license, the government is able to put certain restrictions on businesses and insist that they meet certain standards. Businesses are not allowed to choose their customers based on discriminatory standards. Denny’s can’t refuse to serve African-American customers, and they’ve actually been fined by the government for illegally doing so. Because, again, a business operates at the pleasure of the government and must meet certain standards.

Again, I’m willing to let private pharmacists not fill birth control and Plan B prescriptions as long as they advertise that fact on a large, legible sign set at the entrance to the store. If they do not advertise what they won’t fill and then refuse to fill certain prescriptions, they should be subject to fines for false advertising.

“I worry that making sexual reasons second class just gives justification to those who might argue, “Okay, well, pharmacists should have to fill out the prescriptions to women who have ‘legitimate’ medical reasons to take the pills, but not for those who have sex.””

I think it is valuable to point it out, though. It underlines the fact that these pharmacists don’t know why the pill was prescribed and furthermore, they don’t care. They’re either too ignorant to be allowed to make any medical decision more complex than where to put the directions sticker on the package or they really and truly don’t give a shit that they could be contributing to a patient’s infertility, pain and suffering, or death so long as they can punish a bunch of female strangers for wanting to control their own uteruses. That realization does, I think give any number of people pause and make the idea that they should give that type of asshole the authority to refuse medicine less appealing.

I fear that reinforces the fundie claim that there’s something just wrong with women like me who really do just take it to “slut it up”, i.e. have sexual intercourse without getting punished by pregnancy. I have a completely equal claim to take the pills as someone who has “legitimate” medical reasons.

Of course the fundie wingnuts pretend that this is all about procreation and the sanctity of life.

99% of the time, those contraceptive products are used by women who are engaging in the normal, healthy sexual activites. Those products are used because of women’s biology and so they won’t be punished for having a normal sex life.

Naturally, the fundies never put up a stink about legal products and drugs that pertain to men’s sex life, and pertain to male reproductive biology.

i work in the credit card division at a bank. so when i see people using their credit card to charge a donation to their fundamentalist christian hate groups, do i get to have their charges declined, because it’s against my religious and moral principals to support hate? do i get to refuse to take their credit card payments, thereby forcing them to incur late fees and negative marks on their credit reports? or can i just close their credit cards down altogether, preventing them from making any charges at all?

i’ll make a deal with you, mr. pharmacist, you dispense my prescription for estrogen (evil trans woman abomination that i am), and i’ll process your credit card charges and payments.

Please keep up the “pro-lifers actions increase the number of abortions” arguement. it is undeniably true, and it is one of the few things that might make some “pro-lifers” think about what they are doing.

I worked in clinic defense for years in Denton, Texas (at a clinic that was eventually harassed out of existence). the ONLY times i ever got a response from those “pro-lifers” was when i told them they were CAUSING ABORTIONS. they usually just ignored everything and kept to their “save the babies” spiel, but when confronted with this idea, they were literally speechless. the leaders finally learned to get the newbees away from us, which otherwise they’d never do, as soon as they saw the response on their newer protestors’ faces.

i honestly came to believe that there were so many young people who had completely bought the ‘save the babies” arguement, and had NEVER thought before that THEY and especially their leaders were th ones causing abortions. i know for a fact that some of the people we told this to (and explained it of course) never returned again to protest the clinic, after being regular protestors before.

thanks for this informative and important story, and for all your work.

Oh, I totally agree that pharmacists shouldn’t be the ones deciding if there is a “legitimate medical cause” (and neither should the government) — that’s actually part of my point in raising the example. Patients and their doctors are the only ones who can determine correct treatment, whether that relates to an existing medical condition or whether it is preventative (ie, for “sluts,” and it never occurs to the fundies that there’s health reasons for women to prevent pregnancy, too.) Pharmacists do not and should not have access the information needed to make those decisions; nor the expertise, which is only proven out by those of them who don’t seem to understand that many medications, including the pill, have more than one application. I think that bringing the point up can be helpful in showing that it isn’t possible for them to make the ethical determination they are claiming to make. Not that y’all didn’t know that.

It’s considered medical treatment for men to change their “natural function” with Viagra. It frustrates me that so many don’t think it’s medical treatment for women in a rather more serious situation. I’m one of those want-sex-don’t-want-baby cases too, and ideally I think all of these health decisions ought to recognized as having legitimate medical causes. Unfortunately, I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.

medstudent, you must not be very far along in your studies. You seem to have difficulty with a couple of concepts: that many diseases and conditions are time-sensitive (like, you know, pregnancy), and the decision about what medication is appropriate for a patient is made by the doctor, not the pharmacist.

My question is: Where and when does “conscience” separate from “religion”? If right-wing Christians are going to use the defense of “religious freedom” to justify denying women contraceptive options and reproductive rights, at what point are we going to demand that the government define the specific beliefs and actions that legally qualify as religiously-motivated? If a fundamentalist Christian is going to claim that his/her homophobia is a factor of religion, then the U.S. government needs to have a definition of what constitutes “Christian behavior” and “Christian belief” in order to determine whether or not that homophobe is simply acting in accordance with his/her religious beliefs. The invocation of “religious freedom” to justify hate and oppression, without any nationwide standard for what counts as distinctly religious motivations, is BS. If the U.S. were to officially state that homophobia is an expression of Christian religious freedom, and therefore could be defended as such in a court of law, then I know many LGBT people and allies who might think twice about their affiliations with Christianity.

And in places where people are legally compelled to be — school, for example — the law should not force them to do things that violate their conscience.

I’m not sure if I agree with this. Call me a radical fundamentalist, but I think the argument of “conscience” can sometimes play to the right and have limited utility for those of us invested in social justice and revolution. It might be advisable for left-leaning people to get more comfortable with the idea that yes, there are certain things people should be forced to do. Like, for examples, a) learn about queer and trans people (and the fact that they deserve all the respect and rights of all human beings), and b) accept that women should have the right to have sex however often they want, with whatever consenting partners they want.

In the midnight hour
She cried “more, more, more”
With a Rebel Butt
She cried “more
more, more more!”

You just made my favorite Billy Idol song even better!

Little pretend lawyer Jill doesn’t realize that the pharmacists are acting according to their ethical rights.

Except they’re not acting ethically, because refusing to fill a prescription and not referring them to a pharmacy that will is unethical according to the APhA. But I wouldn’t expect an MRA to look into that.

Thanks for the information on pharmacies and pharmacists, Jill. I can’t beleive pharmacists are doing this!

We recently wrote an article on pharmacists at Brain Blogger. Pharmacists are self proclaimed “drug experts” and for good reason — they have a Doctor of Pharmacy degree that took fours years to earn and in the process studied a lot of different drugs. But should that give them the right to give out a prescription? Could they accurately identify and treat a disease?